


If This Was A Movie

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Cunnilingus, Domestic Violence, F/F, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28535955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Ada's brother is dead. Mariella has some answers.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Woman On Murderous Rampage/Woman Goading Her On
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	If This Was A Movie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziskandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/gifts).



Ada knew that Mariella's father killed her brother. 

At first, she couldn’t explain how she knew. It was a little nibbling in the back of her mind, like a maggot on a carcass. Some of it was probably conjecture - the man was known to beat his children, beat his wife. He’d threatened her several times, although that wasn’t exactly new. Her family wasn’t well liked, what with… one thing and another.

But she’d seen the glee that he’d gotten away with it in the backs of his eyes, and she’d known, deep in her bones.

Truth be told, she wasn’t even fond of her brother. That had been the first thing to pop into her mind, when the sheriff’s deputy had shown up on their sagging front porch. He’d said that Issac was dead, said that they’d have to come pick up the body, said there was a minimum amount for the funeral, and then he had turned and walked away. 

in the movies, the police gave condolences. They put a hand on someone’s shoulder, maybe offered a handkerchief if it was an older sort of television show, when people still carried little bits of fabric in their pockets. But this man looked annoyed to even come to their house, and she saw his nose wrinkle when her mother _wailed_ , and it was the kind of wail that she’d never heard before. 

Annoyance was all that Issac brought about, wasn’t it? Not even anger, he wasn’t good enough for that, just _annoyance_ , like a pebble in your shoe. And his funeral would be money they didn’t have, and her mother wouldn’t stop _crying_. 

Ada didn’t cry. The tears had been hardened into a stone in the center of her chest, and that seemed to freeze outwards, numbing her hands, her feet. She held the paperwork the deputy had handed her, and she stared at the printed letters and numbers without seeing them. She mechanically took her mother into the kitchen, poured a shot of whiskey. She stared at the amber liquid in the little glass, and she considered that her brother would never drink it himself. 

Ripples appeared in the liquid, and it took a moment for her to connect them to her trembling hand. 

It wasn't as if she missed Issac, because he hadn't been much of a presence in her life, beyond a vaguely sullen shadow in the background who suffered in her direction. He took after their grandfather in that respect, but their grandfather at least had the decency to die with minimal fuss and fanfare. 

She saw Mariella's father being walked out of an interrogation room, as she made her way to the coroner's office. The small police station had probably started its life as a butcher shop, but now the sweaty, red faced sheriff sat behind a desk that had once been the meat counter, doing paperwork and glaring at the "no smoking" sign. 

Mariella's father was talking with the sheriff, leaning on the desk with his arms crossed over his chest. He was a blunt knife of a man, all lean angles and flat features, and when his eyes met Ada's, he smiled. It was a sickly, insulting smile, and it made her fists clench that much harder. 

"I'm terribly sorry to hear about your brother," he said, and Ada could hear her teeth creak as she clenched her jaw. "It's always a pity, when the good ones are taken so young."

_You threatened to beat him with his own arm if he kept flirting with your youngest daughter_ , Ada didn't say. She made eye contact with him, and his smile cut deeper into his face. 

She didn't say anything, just nodded, and then the deputy was escorting her towards the morgue, so she could identify the body. He was walking faster than he should have, probably wanting to put as much distance between himself and Ada - he was probably used to people being shorter than he was, and having to trot to keep up. His boots and her boots both clomped down the staircase, and the florescent light flickered just enough to start the seed of a migraine at the corner of Ada's temple. 

Ada was taller than people expected her to be - she had a way of making herself blend into the background, of seeming shorter, smaller. When he turned around, no doubt expecting her to be a few steps behind, he visibly startled when he found they were almost nose to nose.

"He's in there," the deputy said, and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, at the closed door with "morgue" printed on it in block letters. 

She nodded at him, and she opened the door. The knob was very cold under her palm, to go with the coldness of the rest of the basement floor. The morgue was as lifeless and empty as one would expect, and the thin woman in scrubs looked up from her clipboard. She was standing beside a table that contained a sheet. The body underneath it was like a topographical map. 

"Are you here for Isaac Cooper?" The woman sounded bored. 

"Issac," said Ada, the first words coming out of her mouth since she'd stepped into this building. 

The woman frowned down at the clipboard, took out a pen, and scribbled something out. "But Cooper?" 

Ada nodded. 

"Are you the next of kin?"

Another nod. 

"And you are...?" The woman sounded bored. She was chewing gum, and the _snap_ of it was very loud in the echoing room. 

"His sister." 

"His face is messed up," the woman warned, as she tucked the clipboard under one arm, and Ada wasn't sure if it was said as a kindness.

There was little enough kindness in Ada's life that she'd take what she could get. 

Issac's face was, indeed, messed up. His nose had been broken, and he'd died before his eyes had a chance to blacken. Unless they would blacken, as he died? She'd read somewhere that people's hair kept growing when they died, and that was similar to bruises, right?

Her heart was beating very loudly in her ears, as she stared down into her brother's dead face. He'd never been handsome, per se, but in the right light he looked like a certain sort of television actor. Never the star, but the kind who would be the best friend of the vampire or the werewolf, or whatever it was that her sister was watching late at night when she should have been sleeping. 

He'd been an incredibly ugly baby, all running nose and red face. He'd squealed and squawked and howled, and she'd walked him up and down the stairway, too young to be his mother but forced into it regardless. 

"Can you positively identify him?" The woman broke through Ada's thoughts.

"Yes," Ada said. Her voice sounded rough in her own ears. "Yes, it's Issac." 

"I'm going to need you to sign," said the woman, and she was brandishing her clipboard. 

She hadn't pulled the sheet back over Issac’s head, and the colors blooming across Issac's face looked like mud. 

Ada sighed. It would be more money, because of course it was, and the _waste_ of it all curdled in her throat like bad milk. More shitty shifts at the diner, more eating cheap meals, and one more obligation.

Another rock added to the endless pile she had to haul on her back. The way she'd had to haul him around, when he was a baby, the way she was going to have to haul his corpse back, and then pay for a funeral.

She signed, and then she made her way back upstairs. Her footsteps were very loud, and seemed to reverberate through her head. 

Mariella's father - the man had to have a name, why did she only ever remember him by his relationship to his daughter? - was smoking by the entrance. It was one of his foul cigarettes, and he was leaning against the sign that requested people to not smoke by the entrance.

"I'm sorry about your brother," he said again, exhaling more of that horrible smoke in her face, and her lungs burned, but she refused to cough.

She didn't say anything. She nodded, and made to turn towards her car.

His hand was on her arm, and it was squeezing, just a bit too hard. She looked down at it, at the nicotine stained fingertips, and then into his watery blue eyes.

"The boy had it coming," Mariella's father said, and the certainty that he had been the one to kill Issac washed over her, swamping her like a boat. Her mouth dropped open, and she took a deep breath, then pulled away from him, coughing. The smoke burned her lungs and chest, and it seemed to clear her head. 

She didn't say anything to him. She didn't have anything to say. Maybe if it was a movie, she'd have asked him what gave him the right, or she'd slap him. There'd be a swell of triumphant music, and maybe some interesting camera angles.

She'd wanted to study film, once upon a time. She'd fallen in love with movies, when Issac was a baby and she'd sat up giving him bottles while their mother worked the late shift. There had been late night movies, and she'd fallen in love with all of the ways you could tell a story with camera angle and light, even if the sound was low.

But that was a long time ago. That baby had never grown up to be anything, and now he never would be, because he was dead in the morgue, and now she was going to have to raid her meager savings in order to put him in a pine box without a proper headstone for who knew how long. 

The weight of the obligation was going to compact her spine, and she almost allowed herself a moment to lean forward and press her forehead against her steering wheel. Then she caught Mariella's father watching her through the window, a gleeful look on his ugly face, and she steeled herself, and turned the car on. 

She'd break down in her own privacy. 

Whenever that might be.

* * *

Ada still hadn't cried. She'd been trying to - she'd lain in bed the night she'd identified the body, and she conjured up the image of Issac's face, the bruises. She even plumbed her memory for those late nights, watching Kurasawa or Lynch, the shadows playing across Issac's chubby baby face. 

Nothing.

There wasn't anything left in her but tiredness. The scent of Mariella's father's cigarettes seemed to cling to her nostrils, and she ended up getting out of bed to press her face into the linen closet, snuffling in the cedar scent of the mothballs to chase away the acrid burning. 

Mariella. 

That was a name she hadn't thought of in a long time. She hadn't had any friends back in their school days, but sometimes they sat next to each other at lunch. People didn't like Mariella - didn't like that her father owned the bar their parents drank away their salaries, didn't like that he was a skinflint landlord that would evict a widow with kids out if the rent was more than three days late. Mariella's long sleeves and inexpertly applied concealer hid bruises in the shapes of his hands, and if people were different, maybe she and Ada would have become best friends and pulled each other out of the yawning pit that had already started opening beneath their feet back in those days.

But they weren't and they didn't. Mariella finished high school, and then she stood behind the bar. Her sleeves were still long, but the concealer got better. Ada finished school and tried to get a job wherever she could be hired, which wasn't many places.

Nobody liked a Cooper. Especially a Cooper who didn't even have the good grace to be beautiful like Ada's mother had been, or charming like her grandfather. Although then again, her plain looks and plainer way of speaking did her a few favors, since it kept her out of any kind of the traditional family trouble. 

But not Issac. He hadn't been charming or beautiful or clever or... anything, really. He'd been her brother. And now he was dead. 

She lay in bed, trying to remember what it felt like to love her brother, until she fell into an uneasy sleep. 

* * * 

It didn't rain on the day of the funeral, although it should have. It wasn't much of a funeral, really - Ada, her mother, her sister. They stood by the hole in the ground as the pine box was lowered in, and they watched as the hole was filled in. 

Ada tried to muster some feeling, watching the pale wood get covered by the dry dirt. It kicked up plumes of dust, which stuck to her face with sweat. 

The name on the little wooden cross was spelled properly, at least. _Issac Cooper_ , his date of birth and date. When they go the headstone (eventually, when they'd saved up the money, and that was another stone to add to the pile on her back, resentment teetering) she'd have to see if she would be able to muster up a "beloved brother" or "beloved son" or some other lie. 

Maybe she'd have her mother write it out.

* * *

The undertaker's office felt more like some construction company manager's, an old trailer with false wood paneling and a big desk covered in paperwork. The man behind the desk was balding, and wore a tie the color of old milk. 

Ada wrote the check out, being very careful to make sure that it was legible. Her hands were not shaking and her eyes were clear, but her heart was very loud in her ears. She tried not to think of all the _other_ things she could have used that money for.

Instead, she numbly handed the check over, and nodded at the man behind the desk.

Her mother was still standing by the grave, crying like her heart was breaking. She'd buried other people - her own brothers, her parents. She'd been a weeping shell since Issac had been reported dead, but Ada didn't expect anything else. 

Her mother had never been good in a crisis. 

The drive back home was quiet. Ada's sister Maggie was reading a book - she hadn't said much. She never did - at least, not at home. Occasionally Ada would go to a parent-teacher conference and hear about what a bright, vibrant girl Maggie was, but that girl wasn't one that Ada had ever seen. Not since Maggie's father had stormed out, in the middle of a blizzard. 

Maybe Maggie had thrown off the Cooper curse. She had certainly inherited their mother's good looks, before all those years of hardship had worn Theresa Cooper down to an out of focus shape asleep on the old recliner.

Ada's knuckles were white on the steering wheel of her car, as they drove back home. The wind of their passing stirred up the dust, and it followed after them like a brown bridal veil, trailing in the wind.

* * *

When someone in the town died, the rest of the community came together and brought them food. Even if it wasn't someone anyone was particularly... fond of. When Ada's grandfather had died, there had been a few casseroles left on the porch, and she dimly remembered some woman from the church visiting with a cake covered in tiny, multicolored marshmallows.

That was a long time ago, though - before Issac's troublemaking and vandalism (when he was older) killed off some goodwill, and Ada's father had killed off the rest. She wasn't expecting anything at all on the porch, wasn't expecting any visitors at all as they came back from burying her brother.

She was wrong. 

There was a casserole. Unexpectedly, it was in the lap of someone who was sitting on the porch swing, slowly rocking back and forth. 

"Mariella?" Ada's voice croaked from disuse, as she slammed the car door behind her. It sent up another plume of dust, smudging the hems of her black slacks.

"Ada," said Mariella, and she stood up, still holding the big glass casserole dish. "I brought you some food."

"You shouldn't have," said Ada's mother, and there was another wash of sobbing.

"Thank you," said Ada, her tone stiff. What was _she_ doing here? 

"Can I come in?" Mariella was still holding the casserole dish. It was covered by several layers of very tight plastic wrap, and she caught glimpses of a red sauce and melted cheese. 

"... sure?" Ada looked over at her, frowning. People didn't visit them. 

Some of it was because they lived on the ass end of anywhere. They owned the land, and her grandfather had been _positive_ that the town would grow up to meet them. It never did, of course, and Ada had endured the long school bus rides, having to get up at the crack of dawn to get to work on time.

Because times had been so hard, they'd sold off the land around them, gradually - by the time Issac came along, there wasn't any land left except what their house squatted over like a vulture. 

Mariella was wearing a grey dress that might have been black, a few hundred trips in the washing machine ago. Everything about her looked faintly washed out, from her watery blue eyes (just like her father’s), to her pale red hair. Her sleeves were still long, even in the warm weather, and if her concealer was hiding any bruises, she’d gotten good enough at applying it that Ada couldn’t tell. 

Mariella seemed to blend into the sun bleached wallpaper and the sagging furniture. She followed Ada into the kitchen and set the casserole dish down on the table. 

Ada looked at her. 

She looked at Ada.

“It was very kind of you to bring this,” Ada said, and her voice fell into the silence like a match dropped into a bucket of sand.

“Think nothing of it,” said Mariella, and she cleared her throat. The sound lingered.“How about I get this onto plates, you can all change out of your nice clothes?”

Ada should have said something like _you don’t have to_ or maybe _your father killed my brother, why are you here_ , but what came out of her mouth was “Thanks,” and then, “plates are in the cupboard over the sink.” 

"Go get comfortable," said Mariella, and she flashed Ada a nervous smile.

Ada didn't smile back - she wasn't sure what to do with her face, honestly. She did raise a hand in... what, a thank you, a wave? - and made her way towards her bedroom. 

* * *

Ada's mother fell asleep in the recliner, wearing sweatpants and an old t-shirt. There was a plate of reheated lasagna on the end table next to her, untouched. Ada's sister took a plate with a double portion, and disappeared into her own room, leaving Ada and Mariella alone in the kitchen.

The light fixture overhead had a burnt out bulb, and there were dishes in the sink. Ada's sister was supposed to have washed them, but she tended to let them pile up. 

The kitchen was quiet, apart from the clink of forks on their plates, the quiet sounds of chewing. The lasagna was uninspiring, but it was filling and it was warm, and it was food that Ada hadn't had to pay for. 

"I wanted to say," said Mariella, "I'm sorry."

Ada blinked at her. _Is she apologizing about her father killing Issac? No, she wouldn't know about that, I don't think._ She stared into Mariella's eyes, aware that she was being rude and not particularly caring. Would she be able to tell, the way she'd been able to tell with Mariella's father?

Mariella stared back, unashamed, and Ada couldn't move. It was... it was like being hypnotized by a snake, except it _wasn't_ , because some kind of warmth was creeping up into Ada's face, along the back of her neck.

"I'm sorry for how I treated you back in school," Mariella said. "I should've said something."

Ada blinked. "What?" _Nice one._

"I saw how everyone was so nasty to you," Mariella said, her eyes darting down to the damp pile of red sauce and cheese and noodles in front of her. "I should've said something."

"Oh," said Ada. 

She wasn't sure what it was that she'd been expecting. 

"And I know that you've been dealing with a lot of shit, and you were kind to me," Mariella plowed on.

_Was I?_ Ada didn't remember much from those days - she'd just wanted to get out as fast as possible. 

"D'you remember when there was that big strike, back up with the brewers?" Mariella was fiddling with her fork again, jiggling her leg. It was making the floor creak, and the repetitive sound of it was setting Ada's teeth on edge. "We had to close the bar, and then there was that rent strike, since people were mad about... other stuff." 

The light was casting shadows across Mariella's face; some of it was lit from within with honey colored light, and some of it was as shadowed as a hollowed out skull. The light caught her washed out ginger hair, 

Ada faintly remembered it - there had been a riot in town, and cops from the city had come in to help their own small police department. She'd seen the smoke from town, and they'd stayed home from school for a few days. 

It had been a pain, because as boring and lonely as school had been, at least it got her away from all the obligations at home. Issac had stuck to her like a burr, followed her from room to room, and she'd been obliged to entertain him because he threw tantrums if she didn't.

"During that time," Mariella said, cutting through Ada's reminiscing, "we were short on money. And you shared your lunch."

Ada frowned, trying to remember. She remembered Mariella sitting next to her, remembered the other girl not having anything to eat. She vaguely remembered sharing her lunch - half a bologna and cheese sandwich, a Granny Smith apple. She'd never liked Granny Smiths, finding them too sour, but her mother always packed them anyway.

"Oh," said Ada. 

It hadn't been a kindness. The only thing more awkward than sitting at lunch with someone who wasn't talking to you was sitting at lunch with someone who wasn't talking to you _and_ wasn't eating anything. 

"And that was just." Mariella swallowed through a throat full of emotion, glanced up at Ada's face, then back down at her plate. "That was a kindness," she said. "And what with one thing and another, I'm not... used to them."

Some of the emotion leaking out of her voice must have seeped into Ada, because before Ada could entirely understand, she was getting choked up herself. "I'm happy that it helped you," she said, lacking anything else to say. "It was kind of you to bring the food." She took another bite, chewed mechanically. 

"You didn't have to do that," Mariella insisted, and Ada looked into Mariella's eyes, and saw something bright and glittering in the backs of them. Something she didn't recognize, but it made her chest tight and her cheeks hot. "I mean it." She snorted, wrinkled her nose. "Accept a thank you, why don't you?"

Ada probably should have made some meek, agreeable noise, maybe nodded, or... what? What did you do in a situation like this? Everything had taken on a strange, dreamlike cast - the golden light creating a little island, as if they were someplace special and not the godforsaken little house, with its sagging roof and cracked linoleum floors. 

She smiled at Mariella, a slow, faltering thing, and Mariella smiled back, her eyes widening. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were the same pale red as her hair, and were practically invisible, except when they caught the light, at which point they turned into gold leaf.

"Ada Cooper, you are _pretty_ ," Mariella said, and she sounded surprised even as she said it. "You should smile more often."

The smile slid off of Ada's face. "You sound like my father," she said, and now she sounded tired. _You'd be prettier if you smiled, you'd make more money if you showed more skin, people would like you better if you wore more makeup_. 

He'd left when Issac was still in diapers, chased out by quite a few angry husbands and people he owed money to. She'd gotten a postcard from him, a few months after she'd graduated high school, and that was the last she'd heard of him. She'd been tempted to reach out to him when Issac died, but there had been too many other things to deal with. 

Her mother had his number written down... somewhere. One of these days she'd look it up. 

"Can I ask a question?" Mariella put her fork down. 

_She's gonna ask where he went_ , Ada thought. It wouldn't be the first time, and she could never hide the sick twist in the base of her guts. 

"D'you drink bourbon?" 

Ada opened her mouth to refuse, since she didn't have time to get drunk, and she only ever drank to get drunk. "Sure," she said, because why the fuck not. Issac was dead in the ground and her mother might as well have been dead, for all that she reacted to the world. Maggie had some hope, but she moved in a world that didn't include Ada, and Ada was too tired to chase her, too tired to do anything. 

"I've got a bottle of the good shit in my car," Mariella said, leaning forward conspiratorially. "Want some? We can watch the stars."

_I've seen the stars before, they're nothing special_ , Ada didn't say. "Okay," she said instead, and she took another bite of the lasagna. 

* * *

Some hours later, Ada was drunk. They'd brought shot glasses with them, sitting on the old back porch, but that had graduated to drinking straight from the bottle. The bourbon tasted like oak and warmed her throat, leaving traces of vanilla lingering on her tongue and in her sinuses. They were both on the steps, thigh to thigh, and Ada was drunk enough to let herself look at the long, pale line of Mariella's leg where the grey dress rode up. The skin seemed to glow, in the flickering porchlight, and Ada considered the contrast of her own skin against Mariella's, wondered just how pale Mariella's inner thighs would be, if she pushed those short legs open.

It wasn't the first time she'd had these sorts of thoughts, albeit the first time she'd had them about Mariella. She'd never pursued anyone, because who was there to pursue in the first place?

Her skin sang, in all the places that they were touching. When was the last time she'd touched someone like this, close and personal?

Probably Arabella, another waitress at work. They'd gotten drunk together, fucked in the alley, and then Arabella'd moved to the city, and that had been the end of that. 

"So I've got another question for you," said Mariella, and her fingers were loose around the neck of the bottle, which was half full of bourbon. 

"Full of questions, aren't you?" Ada leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs. 

"The pursuit of knowledge is always a worthy goal," said Mariella, and she said it with such a straight face that Ada started cackling, curling forward and laughing into the dirt. "D'you remember Mrs. Harris?" 

"Fuck," Ada said, and she wiped the back of her hand across her lips. "How could I forget?" 

Their old history teacher, who'd had a stick up her ass roughly the size of a redwood, and looked down her nose at every person who lived in their dried up lakebed of a town. 

"So can I ask?" Mariella took a sip, then offered the bottle to Ada. Their fingers brushed when Ada took the bottle, and it tingled. 

Ada let her touch linger, and then she took another mouthful of bourbon, and she let it trickle down her throat, like tasting the dim light shining down over their heads. "Ask what?"

"My question," Mariella said. 

"That _was_ a question," Ada pointed out. She was leaning into Mariella, much closer than she should have, and she wanted... she wanted to kiss Mariella, wanted to feel the warmth of the other woman against her. Those full, soft breasts against her own chest, the beating of Mariella's heart, the hot breath against her own mouth... 

Ada squirmed, pressed her thighs together. Arousal was coursing through her, as hot and sweet as the bourbon. 

"Why'd you name your brother Issac?" Mariella's arm came around, rested over Ada's shoulders. Then her arm went lower, and her hand was splayed out over Ada's ribs, hot as a brand through the thin t-shirt. 

"I didn't," Ada mumbled. "Didja know, so many people thought he was my kid. Because I raised him. Or I tried to." She gave a hollow laugh. "Shitty job on my end, wasn't it?" 

Mariella's pinky was close enough to the curve of Ada's breast that the physical distance felt like a charge, and why was Ada doing this? Ada didn't do these sorts of things. 

But Ada -the Ada who didn't do that sort of thing - had a brother and maybe long ago she had a mother and a sister and she existed as something other than an empty shell that worked and slept and counted down the seconds until she stopped existing and climbed into the grave. It'd be a grave like Issac's, a small one in the dust, and there wouldn't be anyone there but the gravediggers. 

Maybe that was why she turned her face towards Mariella's, why she pressed her mouth against Mariella's, swiped her tongue across the other woman's lips. She tasted bourbon and the salt from the lasagna and the sour-sharpness of a human mouth.

Then her mind caught up with the rest of her, and she made to pull back, but Mariella's fingers curled in her hair, pulling her closer. Ada was barely thinking, as she set the bottle down out of reach, and then she was pulling Mariella closer to her, holding the smaller woman in her lap, hands going to grab Mariella's ass and pull her closer.

Mariella moaned into the kiss, arching her back as her knees dug into Ada's sides. She was clutching at the shoulder of Ada's shirt, and she was rutting her hips against Ada's waist. She had Ada's hair tangled around her fist, and then she was forcing Ada's head back, to kiss and bite at Ada's neck.

_She's gonna turn me purple_ , Ada thought distantly, and _Maggie is gonna hear me, if I keep making so much noise._

Mariella's other hand went to Ada's breast, kneading it roughly. She pinched Ada's nipple, and Ada hissed through her teeth, letting her head be pulled back further. It was like a spring being tightened in her gut, and it left her whole body on edge. She was shaking, and now she was clutching Mariella's hips, hard enough to bruise. 

"Ada," Mariella mumbled against Ada's mouth. 

_She's gonna tell me this is wrong_ , Ada thought distantly, as she started to pull away from Mariella. _That she's drunk, that she didn't mean any of it, ask me not to tell anyone._

"I want to feel you in me," Mariella said, and she kissed along Mariella's neck, to the soft spot under her jaw. " _Please_." 

Ada shuddered, and then it was all a flurry of limbs, flailing awkwardly (they were both _quite_ drunk), and then Mariella was on her back on the porch, her legs resting awkwardly on the steps. The porch light gilded her from forehead to chin, and left her eyes in shadow, and for a moment she looked like a grisly, saintly corpse. 

Her nipples were hard through the thin fabric of her dress, and then she was shoving the neckline down, taking her bra with it. Her breasts were soft and heavy in Ada's hands, and her nipple was hard against Ada's tongue as she took as much into her mouth as she could.

Mariella's sleeves were riding up as well, and the bruises on her arm were green and purple. The same shade of purple that Ada's mouth was leaving along the curve of Mariella's breast, but Mariella's hands were in her hair now, clutching it tightly. "Harder," she groaned, and her hips were rocking against Ada's middle.

Ada bit the side of Mariella's breast, and it _moved_ under her teeth, and Mariella cried out into the night. It was drowned out by the crickets and the rustle of the wind. Ada could barely hear it, over the thud of her own heartbeat. She bit Mariella on the thigh, and Mariella's knees spread open wider. Her panties might have had flowers printed on them at one point, and they clung to Mariella's vulva, a few curls of pubic hair poking out around the elastic.

Ada hauled the panties down, getting back on her heels to pull them all the way off, and she let them dangle off of one leg, then dove back in.

It had been a long time since she'd been intimate like this, and she paused, staring into the face of someone who she hadn't thought of as her friend. And then she stared at her cunt, and she squeezed herself between Mariella's thighs, as Mariella's legs locked around her and dug into her back.

"Hurt me," Mariella gasped. "Hurt me, please, hurt me, make it - _fuck_!" 

Ada, lacking anything else to do, took another hard bite out of Mariella's thigh, and she sucked it harder this time, sucked until she tasted pennies. She pulled off with a loud, wet noise, and she dug her fingers into Mariella's inner thighs, hard enough to bruise. The bourbon was still on the edge of her tongue, and then there was the musk and salt of Mariella's cunt, the slickness of her sweat against Ada's tongue.

Ada's tongue slid between Mariella's labia, and her nose bumped into Mariella's clit. She made her tongue stiff and jabbed it forward, fucking into Mariella, and she tilted her head back to take more of Mariella's vulva into her mouth. She was drowning, and the wetness on her face might have been tears, might have been slick, might have been sweat. She pulled back, and she sucked a mark onto Mariella's mound, and the other woman went stock still.

"Fuck," Mariella breathed, and her whole body trembled against Ada's. "Please," she whined, and her fingers were tangled in her own hair, yanking her head back. "More."

Ada pressed a finger inside of her, and pressed down on one of the bruises. She fastened her lips around Mariella's clit, and she sucked so hard that her tongue ached, flickering the tip of it. Mariella's inner thighs were soft, and they dimpled under Ada's fingers. Mariella's cunt gushed against Ada's face and Mariella's whole body trembled like a leaf in the wind. 

If she pressed her face deep enough, and kept her thoughts on the sensation of Mariella's warm body, Mariella's heartbeat, the taste and scent and texture, she could forget about everything else. She didn't have to close her eyes and remember Issac's face, or her mother's or _anyone’s_. She didn't have to think about the purple-green on Mariella's arms, or the ache in her own back.

Mariella came against Ada's face, and she yanked Ada's hair hard enough that Ada saw stars. She gasped and sobbed through another orgasm, as Ada kept up, and then she was pulling Ada back to her mouth, and they were kissing. 

If Mariella was in any way repulsed at the taste of her own cunt, she didn't show it, as she licked into Ada's mouth, her tongue greedy. She pulled back, panting into Ada's mouth, and then she groaned, shifting. "I'm gonna have a bruise from those steps," she said, and her voice was rough. 

Ada didn't mention the other bruises - the new ones, blooming on her breasts, the old ones on her arms and her legs and who knew where else. 

"My dad named him," said Ada. "Mom and Dad, they wanted to name him Isaac, but Dad can't spell for shit, and Mom was doped up on painkillers." She gave a hollow laugh. "By the time Mom saw it, Dad had decided that no, really, Issac was a real name, and it was some old family name..." She waved a hand, and her arousal was still pulsing through her, making her nipples hard and her heart beat faster. "So... that's why he's called Issac. Was called Isaac. Wasn't my idea."

"That's good," said Mariella. She tucked a piece of Ada's hair behind one ear, then said, "We should kill my dad."

* * *

If it was a movie, Ada would have stood up. Would have said just the right thing, and the music would have swelled, and maybe the camera would pull back, showing her standing at her full height, shoulders pulled back. If Ada had any imagination for music (which she was well aware she lacked), she might have imagined a score swelling, maybe there'd be some dramatic thing happening in the house.

Maybe Ada's mother would finally get up off of that recliner and contribute... _anything_ , really, instead of going to work and then sitting back down.

Maybe Maggie would stop being so withdrawn, and actually... what, help around the house? Talk? 

But it wasn't a movie. 

It was all real life, and real life meant that her knees hurt and her stomach heaved and the world spun around them. 

"What?" She blinked at Mariella, and some of it was booze and some of it was lust and all of it was point blank confusion. 

"My dad," Mariella said. "We should kill him." 

"We can't just kill someone," said Ada, and now her stomach was heaving. She crawled onto the porch, and she lay back. The overhead light was too bright, and she threw an arm over her face so that she didn't have it shining right in her eyes. There were moths fluttering towards it, and she was drunk enough that she could almost imagine that she could hear the sounds their wings made.

"He did," said Mariella, and there it was, out in the open.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ada said, and her whole body had gone stiff. Mariella was sitting close enough to her that the warmth of the other woman's body seemed to radiate back, through the warmth of the night. 

The fact that Mariella's father had killed her brother had been echoing through the back of her head since she'd seen the man at the police station, but it had been stuck in her throat. She was half afraid of letting it out into the open - if she did, she was afraid what might pour out.

There was a rage deep inside of her, a corrosive acid that would eat through her like molten metal through snow, and she was faintly afraid that there wouldn't be anything left by the time it was through. 

Or maybe Ada was just afraid that if she admitted to it, she'd still be powerless, and what would she do then? 

Mariella's hand rested on her leg, and it squeezed. Ada opened her eyes, so that she could meet the other woman's.

"I had a sister," Mariella said, and her voice was very distant, as if she was underwater. "I don't remember much about her. Mama threw all her pictures out, but I saved one, and I kept it hidden under my mattress." 

It felt like something momentous was happening, some torch very slowly getting brighter and brighter. Mariella's hand was creeping towards Ada's, and Ada surprised herself by linking their fingers together. Her fingers were still sticky from Mariella's cunt, but Mariella didn't seem bothered. 

"When I was seven, she was sixteen," Mariella said, "and she had a boyfriend. And I don't know all the details of it, because it isn't talked about at home, and my brother wasn't even born yet, but..." She trailed off. "He threw her down the stairs."

What did you even say to that?

"He threw her down the stairs, and I was hiding under them, because they were shouting," Mariella said. Her voice was a dull monotone. "I don't remember Amberleigh that well. But I remember... I remember the sound she made. It shook up the dust, and it sounded wetter for every step." Her fingers were very tight around Ada's.

"Oh," said Ada, because how did you respond to that? Her hair was sticking to her face, and when she licked her suddenly dry lips she tasted more salt and slick, Mariella's cunt lingering on her face. 

"I heard him beating your brother," Mariella said, and she was staring away, off at the porch. In the golden light, the hickeys Ada had left looked like spots of paint. "Since we live over the bar, and Issac came in, acted like an idiot. Said something to my dad, I don't know what. And I was in my room, which is over the bar, and I had the window open, and I could hear..." She trailed off, then said, "It got wetter."

"Oh," Ada said again.

"We should," said Mariella, "do something." 

"Why haven't you?" Ada asked, and maybe that was too confrontational, because Mariella drew back, cringing like a dog. Her hand withdrew, and Ada missed its warmth already. She laced her own fingers together, digging her fingertips into the backs of her own palms, her knuckles. 

That was answer enough, really.

"Why me?" Ada asked. 

"Because you're strong," Mariella said bluntly, and that was a shock. "You're strong and you're brave and your family is hated by everyone and they can't hate you anymore, can they?"

It stung, but some part of Ada appreciated the honesty. 

If it was a movie, she'd have said _let's do this_ , or maybe _we need to forgive the ones who hurt us_ or some other trite horseshit. 

But it wasn't a movie. So all she said was "How?" and she wondered blearily when this had become her life. 

* * *

It was the drunk driving that made Ada's stomach sick with guilt, and wasn't that _something_? Planning a man's murder wasn't a problem at all, but driving while liquored up... 

She licked her lips again, and she missed the taste of Mariella on her lips. She glanced over at the other woman, and found her staring out the windshield, as if she was counting the streetlights.

"We shouldn't do this," Ada said, but she said it mechanically. It was like acting out a script in a movie.

She'd taken a book out from the library, ages ago, about shooting movies, and the language of light and color. A passage kept ringing through her head, every time the orange sodium lights caught Mariella's hair - _with light as your paintbrush, you can turn sorrow into beauty, and tell more than endless pages of a script._

She didn't know the story being told across Mariella's face, and she was too drunk to try to read between the lines. 

"My mom's as bad as he is," Mariella said, and her voice was sharp. "She saw it all and she didn't do anything. She didn't leave." There was old, complicated rage at the edges of her voice, and it was making Ada's skin crawl. "And my brother..." She trailed off, and then she bared her teeth. It wasn't a smile, it was a snarl. "He's always been better at everything than me.

They were driving very slowly - it had gotten late at some point, and the roads were empty. 

"They need to be stopped," Mariella said. "They need..." And she leaned back in her seat, rubbing her face. Then she paused. "We should park," she added.

"The bar isn't for a ways," Ada said. Her thoughts seemed to be lagging behind them - some part of her mind was still on the porch, her face buried between Mariella's thighs.

"We don't want to be seen near the scene of the crime," said Mariella, and something about the... planning of it sent a ball of ice down into her stomach.

And then she remembered Issac's face, the emptiness sucking at her chest, and it seemed like everything went dim. She came back to herself, and she wasn't in the car anymore, she was standing in the middle of the road. They were at least twenty minutes from town, and it was all eerily quiet. Even the crickets had quieted down. 

Ada was wearing an old pair of sneakers, and they were very quiet on the blacktop. She had her hands in her pockets, and she was trying to walk in a straight line. Her stomach was churning, and the exhaustion that was tugging at her limbs seemed to be weighing her down more every step.

Mariella's dress swished, and her hair seemed to be that much more washed out in the yellow light. 

They walked in silence, and Ada probably should have said something, but she was too drunk, too tired. Her head hurt, and she wanted to lie down, wanted to go home, except she didn't want to go home and face the sobbing silence and the shape of her mother on the recliner, she wanted to... she wanted...

"What do you like?" Mariella asked, and that pulled Ada out of her reverie.

"What?" Ada glanced sidelong at Mariella. She could see the dark silhouettes of their town in the distance, most of the buildings boarded up. 

"What do you like," Mariella repeated. "You never talked about anything at school, and I..." She trailed off. "I had my mind on other things," she said, and then she was rolling her sleeves up and clasping her hands together. She had long, tapering fingers, and the bruises on her arms looked like the scales on a snake, rippling under the lights. 

"I like movies," Ada said, and wow, but this felt awkward. She'd felt Mariella's clit under her tongue, and she didn't know the other woman's favorite color. "I mean... I mean, everyone likes movies," she added, "but I..." She faltered, swaying, aware of how drunk she was. "If we were in a movie right now," she said, "like. If I were filming, I'd have the camera following maybe... thataways behind." She shot her thumb over her shoulder, "and the light... the light, from there, down on you, so that your face was in shadow, and maybe I'd have..." She trailed off again, tried to find the words. She wasn't good with musical terms. "Music," she said at last. 

"You should make movies," Mariella said. 

"That costs money," Ada said, and bitterness crept into her tone now. "Where'd I be able to afford a degree like that?"

"You don't need a degree," Mariella insisted. "You know this stuff. And... I didn't think you had to know stuff."

"You need to know stuff to know any stuff," Ada said, which felt profound when it floated through her head and landed on the pavement like a rotten egg. _I've never been this drunk_ , she thought, but what was she drunk on? Sorrow? Pussy? Bourbon? The unfairness of it all?

"We should get you a camera," Mariella said, and the way she said _we_ shouldn't have made Ada's heart flutter like that. 

_You barely know her, she's probably just using you_ , whispered a traitorous part of her mind. It sounded a little like Issac.

_Everyone uses you. At least she cares_ , she argued back.

"Cameras aren't exactly cheap either," Ada said. 

They were getting to town now - they passed the railroad tracks, which seemed to stretch out for miles. 

"My dad keeps the month's earnings in a safe," Mariella said, "under the bar. I know the combination. We can use that."

"We can't just take your dad's money," Ada said, and she hated how... wishy washy she sounded. 

"Why not? My money as much as his." Mariella stuck her chin out, and she was glaring now. They were walking on sidewalk now, and the road was getting narrower. It was darker, with fewer working streetlights. "I work as hard as he does. Harder, since he doesn't have anyone beating him."

And there it was, out in the open.

"Well," said Ada. She couldn't think of any other response, really. 

"We'll take the money and we'll just... go," said Mariella, and when Ada looked over, there was a wild look in the other woman's eye. "We'll take it and we'll run."

"My family needs..." Ada started to say, but any protest died on her lips. 

Did they?

For that matter, did she _care_? 

When was the last time any of them had done anything for her? Issac was buried, Maggie didn't even acknowledge her existence and didn't need her anymore, and her mother...

Ada noticed, with some surprise, that her fingernails were digging into the palms of her hands. When had that happened? 

"Alright," Ada said. "Alright, I'll go with you." She paused. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere else," said Mariella, and when she took Ada's hand, Ada's heart sang. 

* * *

Town was empty, and although their footsteps didn't echo, it felt like they should have. Maybe Ada was beginning to sober up, or maybe the enormity of _whatever_ was going on was hitting her, but... something was happening, and she was probably in over her head. 

She hadn't been aware it was possible for her to be in over her head, since she'd been drowning for as long as she could remember, and yet. 

And yet. 

"We don't have to kill anyone," Ada said, as they approached the bar. The old building was in the middle of a block, surrounded by empty buildings, all owned by Ada's father. It was a little creepy, but mostly it was just... sad. "We can just. Go. We can get the money, get my stuff back at mine, and then we can go. You and me, we can just leave." 

Ada was holding Mariella's hand very tightly, so tight her knuckles were creaking. 

“They can’t keep going,” Mariella said, and her voice was very quiet. They stood in front of the door. “They can’t keep… it isn’t fair.” Her voice cracked. 

_Life isn't fair_ , Ada didn't say. "We can get the money," she said instead, and then Mariella was carefully unlocking the side door. The streetlights reflected back off of all the different glass surfaces of the bar, and the two of them walked through the quiet, empty space.

An empty bar was a bit like an empty school, all quiet reflections where it should have been noisy echoes. 

"You open the safe," said Mariella. 

Ada looked down at her hands, which were still shaking. She wasn't sure if she'd be dexterous enough, truth be told. "Why?"

"If anyone comes down and sees you standing behind the bar they might attack you," said Mariella, and it was so _straightforward_ that it made some part of Ada's heart ache. "If they see me, they might yell or hit me, but they won't think I'm a burglar."

Ada tried to imagine a world that she'd accept being beaten like, tried to imagine _knowing_ that. 

Her own life was an albatross of drudgery and obligation, but the one time Issac had tried hitting her she'd grabbed him by the back of the shirt and thrown him out the back door, and that had been the end of that. 

"I'm sorry," Ada said, and she wasn't sure what she was apologizing for. 

"Don't," Mariella said, and now she just looked tired, as she went behind the bar, beckoning for Ada to follow after her.

"Don't?" Ada frowned, unsure.

"Don't be sorry. Don't... don't be sorry for me, don't do any of that." Mariella beckoned for Ada to come closer, and then she was grabbing Ada by the shoulders, pushing her into the bar. Her mouth was hot and wet against Ada's own, and it didn't taste like bourbon anymore. 

Ada kissed her back in spite of herself, because even if this was an ill advised time, she'd always loved kissing, and it felt like this was very important, here and now. Or maybe she was drunk enough that _everything_ felt important. All the important things felt important, at the very least. 

"The safe is down there," said Mariella, indicated under the bar, and Ada got unsteadily onto her knees, squinting in the dimness. She could just make out the numbers on the dial. "Okay. So the first number is going to be nineteen, to the left." 

"Nineteen," Ada mumbled to herself, and she moved the dial very carefully. 

"Twenty three to the right," said Mariella. 

"Twenty three," Ada echoed, and she was still turning it carefully. She could barely make the dials out.

She hadn't used a safe since she'd been working at the one convenience store back when she was still in high school, and she remembered her manager's eyes boring into the back of her neck as she'd unlocked the great thing.

"Seventeen to the left," said Mariella, and Ada carefully clicked the dial towards seventeen.

Then Mariella froze, and she stood up. There was the sound of footsteps coming down the steps, then; "Mari?" 

Ada made to get up, but Mariella's hand was on top of her head, keeping her in place. 

"Jacob," said Mariella. "Go back to bed, I'm just checking something." 

"What're you doing down here?" He sounded drunk, although that wasn't any particularly new development, from Ada's experience. She'd minimized her interactions with Jacob, as she found him tedious at the best of times and dangerous at the worst. There was a cricket bat under the bar with her - Mariella's father used it on particularly drunk customers causing trouble. He'd bragged about how some cousin of his from the UK had given it to him. 

_Did he use it on Issac?_ The thought flashed through her head, and she stared at it, eyes wide. Her palms were very sweaty, and her mouth was very dry. She reached a hand out, wrapped her fingers around the grip.

"Just checking on something," said Mariella. Her voice was very stiff, almost brittle. "Go back to bed." 

_Issac shouldn't even have been here_ , Ada thought, and she was tired all over again. _Too young. Maybe if I'd done a better job, or if Mom had done a better job, or if my father had stayed, or -_

Whatever train of thought she'd been riding was jolted off its railed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Mariella yelped, pulling back, and Jacob snarled something that Ada didn't understand. 

Everything went a little bit dark around the edges. She wasn't entirely aware of the fact that she was standing, that she was lifting up the cricket bat and raising it above her head. 

"Get your hands off of her," she tried to yell, but she wasn't the sort of person to yell, and she was a bit too drunk to get the syllables out. It was just a mush of sound, and then there was a _crack_ , as she brought the cricket bat down on the arm that was outstretched, grabbing at Mariella's. 

The crack was very loud, and then it sounded _wet_. Ada must have jumped over the bar (she didn't remember doing it, but she must have, her arm ached where she'd used it to vault over the shiny wood surface), because now she was facing Jacob.

Jacob was screaming, and his arm was at an odd angle. She stared at it, and the cricket bat was very heavy in her hand.

"The fuck are... you doing..." Jacob gasped out. He was on the floor now, staring up at her, and his eyes were very wide with pain. It looked a little bit like he was frothing at the mouth. "We already got rid of that little shit, I'll -"

Ada didn't let him finish the sentence. She drew the cricket bat back, and she hit his face with it. 

The sound was wet. It was a wet sort of crunch, and she drew the bat back again and again, as some emotion she couldn't identify flowed through her like water through a hose. The first hit had sent a jolt up her arm, but each hit it seemed to get softer, and then Mariella was grabbing the back of her shirt, and she was coming back to herself. 

The thing in front of her had been a person at one point, but the thing on top of the neck wasn't a head anymore. It wasn't really a neck, either. There was stickiness across her face, making her shirt stick to her chest, and that... was uncomfortable. 

Hm. 

Ada seemed to be existing a few feet to the left of herself. Her breath was very loud in her ears, and everything was spinning. 

"You killed him," said Mariella. She sounded stunned.

"I'm sorry," Ada said, and she was numb. Just _numb_ , her hands cold and her mouth dry. 

"Don't be," Mariella said, and she pressed close to Ada, kissed her wet and soft and sweet. The kiss was an anchor, and Ada clung to it, the cricket bat still heavy in her hand.

Everything went... soft around the edges, for a while after that. She didn't remember much of it, except the weight of the cricket bat in her hand, and then she was walking up a flight of stairs. They creaked under her shoes, and there was blood splatter across the front of her shoes, wasn't there? Blood and... other things. She'd have to clean them, before going in to work.

Then she was in front of a door, and Mariella was going inside, grabbing someone. Someone who was in an old pair of pajama pants, and who smelled so strongly of cigarettes that Ada could smell it, even through the copper of the blood that filled the air. 

They were standing by the foot of the stairs, and Ada noted that, noted it casually and distantly. There was shouting. Then the man was jerking his hand out of Mariella's grasp, and his arm was rising up. 

Ada swung the cricket bat, and it connected with the man's side with a splintering _crack_. The shockwave went up her arm again, and then she was staring into those watery blue eyes, picking up whatever light there was in the dim hallway. He bared his yellow teeth, and then she hit him again, and he was tripping backwards down the stairs.

She didn't watch him go all the way down, but Mariella was right. It did sound wet. 

"You gave him more mercy than he gave your brother," said Mariella, and Ada wasn't sure if the wetness on her face was tears or blood, but she didn't care. She looked at the pitiful pile of meat and blood at the foot of the stairs, and there wasn't any relief at the fact that Issac was avenged. 

She was just tired.

When Ada looked over at Mariella, the other woman's eyes were bright, and her teeth were bared. "It's what you fucking get," she hissed into the darkness, and her tone was like acid, cutting through the air and making Ada's eyes water. 

* * *

She came back to herself again to Mariella speaking in her ear. "Just put it under the door," Mariella said, and there was a doorstopper in Ada's hand. 

"Why are we doing this?" Ada did as instructed anyway, shoving the little wedge of wood under the crack at the bottom of the door.

"It's her fault as much as his," Mariella said. There was a manic note to her voice, and she was shaking. She laced her fingers with Ada's, and she squeezed them so tight that Ada's knuckles ached. "She knew all of this. She knew... she knew." Mariella's voice was thick. 

Ada was still crying, but the emptiness didn't seem to be going away. There was _something_ going on inside of her, but she was so detached that she hadn't a clue what it actually was. 

"What are we doing?" Ada stood up. The cricket bat had clattered to the ground, and was just standing there. Her hands were sticky with blood, and she was being led down the stairs. 

She didn't step on the dead body, and neither did Mariella. 

"We're having revenge," said Mariella. "We're taking back what's ours."

_This isn't a movie_ , Ada didn't say, because that didn't seem to be the right thing to say. 

If she ever made a movie about a murder, she'd have to be careful about the sound design when someone was beaten. Assuming they were beaten. Maybe that'd be too close to home.

"We need to leave," Mariella said, and she was gathering things from around the bar. "We need... we can't be caught. I don't wanna know what they'd do to us, Daddy was friends with the sheriff and you're a Cooper, they might give us the injection or _worse_ , there has to be somethin' we can do..."

Mariella was babbling, a stream of panic, and that seemed to jolt Ada out of her fugue state. "We can burn the place down," she said, and that was a surprise. _You're going to be burning a woman alive_ , shrieked some part of her mind, and then it was silenced by the memory of what Jacob's head had looked like, caved in like that. 

"Yeah," Mariella said, and she kissed Ada again. There was a red, tacky stain on her cheek, and Ada reached up to wipe it clean. She only succeeded in spreading it around even more. 

“We’ll burn it and then we’ll go. We can… anywhere else.” Ada’s fingers slipped between Mariella’s own, the tips pressing into the palms of Mariella’s hand. “We could… we could go back to my house,” she added. “My father’s address is there,” she added, almost as an afterthought. 

_This is a night of killing fathers_ , Ada thought, and her tone was delirious. _But why the fuck not. What’s he ever done for me?_

* * *

When she came back to herself, they were walking. They must have been walking for a while, actually, because her feet hurt. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and the blacktop was rough under her feet. 

“Where are we going?” Ada asked. 

“I don’t know,” Mariella said, and her fingers slipped into Ada’s.The sky was turning orange from the fire, and she could hear the sirens in town.

It wasn’t an answer, but there was a comfort to having someone else to walk next to, in the smoke scented air.


End file.
